Historically, the determination of channel utilization has been important for capacity planning, problem analysis, as well as for performance monitoring. Previously, the utilization of a channel path has been measured by accumulating the amount of time that a channel is busy during predefined time intervals. These measurements indicate how busy a channel was during each interval, and based on the measurements, work management and planning decisions were made.
With the advent of more complex channels (e.g., FICON (Fibre Connections) channels offered by International Business Machines Corporation), the previous techniques for measuring channel utilization are inadequate. This is because the new channels are considered a collection of resources and an indication of the channel being busy does not indicate in what capacity it is busy. Thus, a need exists for an improved measurement of channel utilization. In particular, a need exists for a capability that indicates what portion of the channel is busy and the particular utilization of that channel portion.